Irish Hacker Cracks iPod Nano, Finds Movies, Games

By Bryan Chaffin

Dec 28th, 2010 5:59 PM EST

An Irish hacker named James Whelton announced Monday that he has successfully hacked Apple’s new iPod nano using a springboard hack. That process allowed him to create a “blank space” on the device by removing an app, and Mr. Whelton said that he hopes to be able to use this process to allow further modification to the device. He also discovered support for movies, games, and more in the device.

“The springboard hack is just the removal of a app and creation of a blank space,” Mr. Whelton wrote at his site, Nanohack.me. “Not that amazing, but what’s important is the bypass of nano’s cache comparison, which compares any modded SB file and reverts it if it doesn’t like it, this opens up the possibility of hacking and modding, while not adding bootloaders or any of that fun stuff.

He was able to then root around in the devices files, and discovered a list of supported features in the nano’s preference plist file, including Movies, TV Shows, Apps, Games, vCards, Calender events.

“With the bypass I figured out,” he wrote, “I hope to enable these pretty soon.”

Mr. Whelton has opened up the process of hacking the device to other people, posting progress reports at Nanohack.me, as well as through his Twitter account. He posted the movie below to YouTube to demonstrate that the springboard hack was real.